Post by ferris1248 on Oct 26, 2024 10:12:41 GMT -5
It would be interesting hear from our band guys comparisons between Phil Lesh and Barry Oakley and the jam bass lines they both carried their bands with.
"Even among the mongrels and misfits who made up the Grateful Dead, Phil Lesh managed to be an oddity. He was older than the others and had swum in different cultural pools. Schooled in classical music and besotted by beatniks, he didn’t cut his teeth on folk and blues. He’d never made rock-and-roll before guitarist Jerry Garcia convinced him to join his band the Warlocks on bass in 1965. Lesh hadn’t played one."
"They would soon be known as the Grateful Dead, who over 30 years would blow open the aperture of rock music, rock concerts and rock fandom. Lesh’s first embrace of uncertainty crystallizes the crucial element he brought to the Dead: He pushed the band into the unknown. He channeled his love of improvisatory jazz, contemporary classical music and technology into their music, ensuring that the rock-and-roll he played reflected his obsessions. Thanks to Lesh, the Dead were liberated from the three-chord shuffle from the start."
"Lesh died Friday at 84, just weeks before the Grateful Dead were to take another curtain call for their contributions to American culture. The band’s rise through the psychedelic byways of the Bay Area roughly mapped with Lesh’s increasing confidence within the band. With Garcia taking a deliberately laissez-faire approach as leader, Lesh had free rein to integrate adventurous concepts within the band’s folk-blues architecture. Introducing the rest of the group to the searching explorations of John Coltrane, Lesh also seized the possibilities of the recording studio, often to the consternation of the band’s associates. In a letter lamenting the cost overages during the recording of their second album, 1968’s “Anthem of the Sun,” Joe Smith of Warner Bros. singled him out as the catalyst for chaos within the band: “It’s apparent that nobody in your organization has enough influence over Phil Lesh to evoke anything resembling normal behavior.”
“Touch of Grey,” the song that gave the Grateful Dead their first Billboard Top Ten hit two decades after their first record, turned the band’s world upside down. Fresh fans flocked to the Dead, upsetting the delicate balance of the Deadhead ecosystem. Lesh bristled at the larger venues the band had to play to accommodate new listeners and, through the rest of his life, wound up choosing intimacy whenever he could. His options increased after the Dead disbanded in the wake of Garcia’s death in 1995. Freed of the confines of the Dead touring machine, Lesh opted to challenge himself creatively, designing Phil Lesh and Friends as a collective featuring a rotating crew of musicians, many quite younger than the bassist himself."
"Although he occasionally reunited with his surviving bandmates, participating in the 2004 tour as the Dead and the group’s farewell concerts at Chicago’s Soldier Field a decade later, Lesh preferred settings where he could reconnect with the sense of adventure that fueled him during the band’s glory days. While Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann toured arenas as Dead & Company in recent years, Lesh stayed near his home, often playing Terrapin Crossroads, the San Rafael, California, venue he established with his family, with his Terrapin Family Band, which often featured his grown sons Grahame and Brian."
"Lesh’s decision to not participate in Dead & Company suggested that he found sustenance not in the Dead itself but rather the band’s ethos: the idea that a group of mismatched musicians could stumble their way toward the sublime. By pushing the Grateful Dead toward new, unheard vistas, Lesh demonstrated what could be possible within rock-and-roll — not just the outer reaches of “Space” that he encouraged in the group’s famous improvised jams, but by turning inward on compositions “Box of Rain” and “Unbroken Chain,” songs that exhibited an emotional intelligence uncommon in rock. Within that spectrum — from the head to the heart — laid Lesh’s enduring legacy, an entire strange trip in one full life."
www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/phil-lesh-was-a-spaceman/ar-AA1sYwa5?ocid=anaheim-ntp-feeds&pc=u531&cvid=ca99c4c8ba3941909468d2a171540202&ei=12
